Then comes the supper, which they still consider but a part of the bath: and then a third time they bathe again, as the best place to converse with their friends.' 'Per Hercle! but we have their imitators at Pompeii.' 'Yes, and without their excuse.

The magnificent voluptuaries of the Roman baths are happy: they see nothing but gorgeousness and splendor; they visit not the squalid parts of the city; they know not that there is poverty in the world.

All Nature smiles for them, and her only frown is the last one which sends them to bathe in Cocytus.

Believe me, they are your only true philosophers.' While Glaucus was thus conversing, Lepidus, with closed eyes and scarce perceptible breath, was undergoing all the mystic operations, not one of which he ever suffered his attendants to omit.

After the perfumes and the unguents, they scattered over him the luxurious powder which prevented any further accession of heat: and this being rubbed away by the smooth surface of the pumice, he began to indue, not the garments he had put off, but those more festive ones termed 'the synthesis', with which the Romans marked their respect for the coming ceremony of supper, if rather, from its hour (three o'clock in our measurement of time), it might not be more fitly denominated dinner.